“Rich people are disgusting.”
“You’re not wrong.” He feeds me a grape. His fingers linger at my lips, and I bite them gently. “Though I notice you’re not complaining about the thread count.”
“The thread count is the only reason I stay.”
His smile is slow. Dangerous. “Is it?”
“That and the sex.”
He rolls me beneath him. Kisses me until I forget about the food, the crumbs, everything except his weight pressing me into the mattress and his cock hardening against my thigh.
“What about this?” He slides inside me in one smooth thrust. “Is this why you stay?”
I gasp. “Partly.”
“What else?” He moves. Slow. Deliberate. Each stroke hitting deep. “Tell me.”
“The library.” My voice wavers. “That 1820s restoration manual—ah?—”
“What else?”
“The view.” I wrap my legs around him. “The gardens. The—fuck—the way you talk about art like it matters.”
He stills inside me. Vulnerability shining through in his gaze.
“What?” I ask.
“You like how I talk about art?”
“I like—” I hesitate. But his eyes are so open, so vulnerable, that the truth spills out before I can stop it. “I like your mind, Elio. The way you think. The connections you make. It’s—” I swallow. “It turns me on as much as this does.”
His whole body goes still. Like I’ve said something he doesn’t know how to process.
“My mind,” he repeats.
“Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it—” He shakes his head. Starts moving again, but slower now, more careful. His gaze stays locked on mine. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
“What, that you’re smart? Elio, you run a billion-dollar empire?—”
“That’s not the same thing.” His hand cups my face. “People value my strategic mind. My ability to calculate risk, to outmaneuver enemies. But the way you—” He stops. Swallows. “You’re saying you like the way Ithink. Not what it produces. The process itself.”
Oh.
I understand now. The wrong-footed look on his face. The careful way he’s holding me.
He’s been wanted for his body. His power. His name. His money. The violence he’s capable of and the protection that violence provides.
But no one’s wanted him forhim. For the man who reads Latin for fun and remembers random theses about restoration ethics. For the mind behind the monster.
“Yes,” I say simply. “That’s what I’m saying.”
His eyes close. His forehead drops to mine. A tremor runs through him, the earthquake of being truly seen. When he opens his eyes, something new lives there. And when he starts moving again, it’s reverent. He makes love to me like I’ve given him a gift he doesn’t know how to repay.
Night falls. Rises. Falls again.
We lose track of time entirely. The world outside the windows cycles through darkness and dawn while we exist in our own bubble, touching and talking and touching again.
